


Where You Start

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Bonding, Family History, Gen, Hera's Heroes, Legacies, Missing Scene, Season/Series 03, self-made people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 18:05:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12086454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: “I thought that…you were like me.”Like me?Hera didn’t understand, but she knew enough to speak gently. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me a little more.”"I…just…” He sighed. “I didn’t know that you grew up with all of this.” He waved his hand at the walls of the little room. “That’s all. It’s cool.”A missing scene from "Hera's Heroes." Locked up in Hera's childhood home and awaiting Thrawn's ultimatum, Ezra and Hera have a heart-to-heart.





	Where You Start

After the admiral—Hera had seen his stripes; Ryloth was pulling Imperial admirals now—shut them in the servant’s quarters, she and Ezra had plenty of time to think. And talk. Uncharacteristically, Ezra was doing a lot of the former and not much of the latter.

“The door is solid,” she told him.

“Yeah.”

“You could probably get it open.”

“Sure.”

“But we’d be caught before we could escape.”

“Uh huh.”

“Better to wait until they move us, probably.”

Sitting on the ground, he made no response.

“Ezra?”

“Yeah?”

“You do know we’re going to get out of this, right? We’ll be fine.”

“What? Oh, yeah. I know that, Hera. That guy’s bad news, but this is no big deal.”

“Is your head hurt?”

“No. I mean, yes, but it’s not that bad.”

“What is going on with you then? You’re not usually this quiet.”

“Nothing. Just thinking. Nothing, Hera.”

She waited.

“It’s just…I thought…”

“You thought what?”

“I thought that…you were like me.”

 _Like me_? Hera didn’t understand, but she knew enough to speak gently. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me a little more.”

“Nevermind.”

“Try me,” she suggested, watching him struggle with the words. “Just try.”

“I don’t…I mean… Look. You save everything. You know how to fix things. You…can make a little bit go a long way—you do it with the fuel all the time. And I’ve seen you do things like… Well, like when we’re running low on things, and you sit in the galley and stare at the plates. And then sometimes you decide to make the portions a little smaller. And sometimes you just take stuff off of your plate and Kanan’s. I…just…” He sighed. “I didn’t know that you grew up with all of this.” He waved his hand at the walls of the little room. “That’s all. It’s cool.”

Oh, so that was it. This one she could handle. “Ezra…” Hera slid down next to him, back against the wall. This was going to take a while. “This—” she gestured as he had— “this is not the whole story. Look, I lived here until I was six. Parties and dignitaries and the whole circus. And servants, yes. Really, my father has always had aides in his work. But that’s a little different. These were servants, to clean the house and cook the food and… Anyway.”

Ezra sat up, rubbed his head, and listened.

“When I was about seven, the Clone Wars came to Ryloth. They came here first because both sides wanted the spice, and we all had to leave home suddenly. I celebrated my seventh birthday on the Cazne plains, waiting for a supply drop that couldn’t get through, and that was…hard.”

He winced in sympathy, and she remembered that seven hadn’t treated him particularly well, either.

“Probably harder because I wasn’t used to shortage.” But that wasn’t the point. She shook herself out of that contemplation. “At any rate, the Jedi broke the siege and my father established our people in the tunnels under Cazne, and I spent the rest of the Clone Wars there, learning how to do a lot with few supplies. And those were my very best years on Ryloth. So…you’re right. I am like you.”

Ezra snorted. “Sort of. I haven’t been to school since I was seven.”

Hera leaned in closer to him. “I’ll let you in on a secret. My first experience in a normal classroom was flight school. And calling that normal would be…”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine that was about sitting still in desks,” he laughed. “Did you get in trouble a lot?”

“I’ll have you know I was an excellent student.”

He stared at her.

“…Other people caused the trouble,” she admitted primly.

“Yeah, I was always getting in trouble for weird stuff that I didn’t do on purpose, too.”

“I’ll bet you were.”

Hera picked up his scout trooper helmet and examined it, wondering what would have happened to Ezra if he’d been a more obedient child, less quirky. Maybe his life would have gone easier if he weren’t so sensitive, always understanding things by feeling them long before he could puzzle through them with logic. He was like Kanan in that way.

Then she thought of all the times Kanan had run his hand over his hair in frustration and accused, “That kid is just like you! You’d think I would know how to deal with him by now.”

Ezra had only been a part of their lives for a few short years, but sometimes Hera had a hard time remembering that he hadn’t always been there, reflecting the things they taught him and injecting his own brand of reckless pragmatism.

“Look at it this way—” Ezra broke into her thoughts. “Sabine’s rich. She doesn’t talk about it, but everything about her screams money. Kanan’s a Jedi. I mean, he was raised as a Jedi. On actual Coruscant. Zeb’s got his honor guard thing. …Chopper, I’ve got nothing for.”

“He’s a veteran,” Hera supplied absently.

“Okay, if you say so.”

“He fought in wars before you and I were born. He probably knows more about how the galaxy functions than any of us. …Attitude aside.”

Ezra stopped and looked at her for a moment. “Okay, Hera.”

“Sorry. You were saying?”

“Just that I’d never been off Lothal before I met you guys. And then I got all the new spacer sicknesses, and Sabine and Zeb teased me so much… It… It was nice to think that maybe you’d been that way too, that maybe you’d just been some kid running around in the dirt looking for food, a long time ago.”

“Oh Ezra, I was.”

“This is hardly the average place to grow up.”

Hera thought about that. “Well…” she considered aloud. “You’re one of the last remaining Jedi. So…you’ve got us all there.”

“Yeah, but that came later. I mean, that’s a thing that I do…and AM…but it’s not really…” He stopped, flustered. “I’m just _me_.”

Hera grinned at him.

“Fine, I see your point.”

“You know,” Hera told him, “I always envied people who didn’t have a…legacy. The galaxy didn’t look at them wondering why they weren’t as brave or as good as their parents. Any success was a real achievement, something they did on their own.”

“Hmph.” Ezra frowned, his eyebrows taking on that broody look that Hera always associated with Kanan. That sideways angry stare, though—that was all Ezra. “My parents were good people. Really good people.”

“I know they were.”

“I…always wished…I always wished…” he hesitated, “…that they would stop being good people so they could just be my parents.”

“Oh, Ezra, I think we ARE alike.”

He nodded, subdued.

“And it wasn’t that long ago!”

“What?”

“When I was a kid playing in the dirt. It wasn’t a long time ago!”

Oh, there was that spark back in his eye. “It happened at the same time as some ancient war, right?”

Hmm. Nice one, kid. “Yeah, yeah. Keep it up and you’re going to be sorry you took the helmet off.”

He grinned at her. “Okay, we’re the same. So…what do you want to do now?”

“I was thinking maybe we’d blow some things up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Know what bothers me the most about Star Wars? Okay, it's the lack of personhood given to droids and stormtroopers. But you know what bothers me the next most after that? How everyone is secretly related to some other awesome person from Star Wars lore. I get that it's the hero cycle and all that. But it means a lot more to me to see a regular person standing up to tyranny because that's the decision they've made than to see the galaxy's royalty fulfilling the role bestowed upon them by fate. And I want to see MORE regular people, because I don't like how much our stories reinforce the idea that being born to wealth and power is part of what makes a hero. Maybe it's a personal thing? I have a rant against the concept of princesses, along these lines. 
> 
> Also, the locks were installed on the doors after the Empire started using the Syndulla home as its headquarters. Cham didn't lock the servants in their rooms. Just in case you were concerned.


End file.
